E-democracy

E-democracy, in full electronic democracy, the use of information and communication technologies to enhance and in some accounts replace representative democracy.

Theorists of e-democracy differ, but most share the belief that some of the traditional limits to citizenship in contemporary liberal-democratic polities—problems of scale, scarcity of time, decline of community, and lack of opportunities for policy deliberation—can be overcome by new forms of online communication.

Theoretical origins

A distinct body of ideas forms the backdrop to e-democracy in both theory and practice. During the 1960s a generation of political theorists, including Benjamin Barber, C.B. Macpherson, and Carole Pateman, established an agenda for participatory democracy that persisted well into the 21st century.

During the 1980s many sociologists and political scientists reconsidered the concept of community. Some, such as Robert Bellah and colleagues, bemoaned the intensification of individualism in American society and called for a new communitarian ethic. Others, such as Amitai Etzioni, argued in favour of strong, emotionally powerful community bonds based around family and locality.

The final theoretical inspiration for e-democracy is Jürgen Habermas’s concept of the public sphere: an idealized autonomous sphere of communication in which citizens can freely engage in reasoned debate away from the controlling influence of the state, large media corporations, and structures of social inequality. The idea of citizens deliberating in freely formed associations in civil society before taking that knowledge up to the level of government recalls the direct democracy of ancient Athens, but e-democracy updates this by focusing on how political discourse is mediated. The Internet emerges as a communication medium uniquely suited to providing multiple arenas for public debate that are relatively spontaneous, flexible, and, above all, self-governed.

Community networks

Community networks first emerged during the 1970s but proliferated in many liberal democracies during the 1990s as the costs of software, computers, and networking equipment began to fall. Early networks, such as the Berkeley Community Memory Project near San Francisco and the Santa Monica Public Electronic Network near Los Angeles, used basic technologies such as text-based bulletin boards, e-mail, and public-access terminals in physical public spaces such as stores, community centres, and libraries. Most community networks are public-private schemes that incorporate three main features: a high-speed network offered free of charge or at a subsidized rate to households; some form of community technology center, often based in a community building; and an emphasis on creating content specific to the local community.

Community networks are based on the idea that by handing to ordinary people the power to shape the production of online information about their local neighbourhood, virtual communities can improve geographical communities by creating new social ties and reciprocal trust, the ingredients of social capital.

From community to politics

Some e-democracy projects have attempted to connect social networks with broader political processes while remaining independent of government, parties, or interest groups. Foremost among these is Minnesota E-Democracy (later E-Democracy.org), which was established in 1994 and became one of the world’s largest subnational-level political discussion forums.

In the early 21st century there was a significant shift toward attempting to plug online networks into formal political processes. Central and local government agencies as well as legislatures slowly but surely started to experiment with online policy discussions and citizen consultations. These initiatives attempted to provide a bridge between informal online deliberations among citizens and structures of governance that provide an interface with “real” decision-making processes. The deliberative turn in governance has already generated a range of non-Internet methods for involving citizens in policy making, such as citizens’ juries, peoples’ panels, local policy forums, focus groups, mini-referendums, and petitions. E-democratic projects introduce the Internet into the mix. These have generally followed two broad models: consultative and deliberative.

Consultative approaches stress the communication of citizen opinion to government. The assumption is that information is a resource that can be used to provide better policy and administration. Probably the best example of the consultative model in action is the U.S. federal government’s e-rule-making program. This is designed to allow interest groups and individual citizens to comment on department and agency rules as they are being developed.

Deliberative models conceive of a more complex, horizontal, and multidirectional interactivity. The United Kingdom was a pioneer in experimental attempts to integrate online deliberative forums directly into policy discussions. The U.K.’s Hansard Society conducted several experiments from the late 1990s, including a discussion on flood management, a pathbreaking forum on experiences of domestic violence involving more than 200 women in interactive discussion, and an online evidence and discussion forum on the 2002 draft Communications Bill. The latter was the first genuine attempt to integrate an online forum with an established parliamentary committee.

E-democracy has provoked much theoretical discussion. Yet, its main themes are increasingly embedded in political practice. They have been enshrined in a wide variety of national and local experiments, in many different settings, using different forms of computer-mediated communication, in countries as diverse as Australia, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden.